So following Lithium's advice by not planning out way too much, it should suffice to simply brainstorm the major story and leave the filling of the gaps for the rest—or not.

I've been talking about my idea for how things go, and it got received well enough imo, so here it is:

The Story

The story starts off inside the DD building. The site, as inactive as it currently is, makes people around upset about it—the staff, in especial—so they start talking about the issues of the site and once the inactivity is addressed, they blame it on one another, and that naturally develops into a shitstorm. What hate resulted from all the aggression lead to evil energy circling about, so people started fighting each other. That's where the evil version of my character shows up.

As established in the former Shadowlith collabs, people will just move to the realm of darkness, except that, in my opinion, as dark as things were at the beginning, things were slightly awkward to animate, so things will take a brighter turn.That's where my guy ended up staying, and it's likely where people will be fighting, if not tweak the background slightly. So once the staff are summoned in there, each fighter will be isolated in a separate dimension where they fight a duplicate of... ShadowSifter? ShadowXavier? Idk sounds like a cool name...

Once the duplicate is done for, the fighter goes on to fight the real one. Once the real one is finished, he goes back to his senses, bringing back the good version of Lithium, Sharpshooter, and Firecracker, and probably the ones that died in the other collabs.

How did my guy turn evil, you might askI was hoping you guys would come up with who said that phrase... But basically something turned my character mad the same way Shadowlith did in the first collab.

The abilities of ShadowSifter/Xavier/whatever youlike

I was thinking that since he beat both Shadowlith and Sharpshooter, he absorbed their souls making him something way more evil. Which means, he should have all the abilities of Sharpshooter, Shadowlith, and Firecracker's amazing material arts. This isn't RHG, and it makes sense to have a villain this overpowered, all things considered... Plus it's fun to animate OP dudes in general, so this should be inviting for people to animate.

In the end...

I know many of you won't be able to do much at the current time, with life and all which is all understandable, so the least we can do is brainstorm the idea and flesh it out into something that is not only easy to execute, but also cohesive in terms of storyline, taking feedback from SL2's comments from Dojo's Youtube into account. For me, I want to design how my character will look, and maybe figure out some world details so everyone animates his character in the same environment. What's most important is that it's fun to do.

I was hoping I could somehow implicitly fit in SvR2 in there, but idk if that's gonna be possible, given circumstances. But if you guys have an idea, please don't hesitate. Well'll keep occasionally fleshing this out for maybe a few weeks before we agree to start animating.

fan fictions don't make very good collabs tbh. and sequels can get stale and garner a lot of high expecations. maybe expiriment and try something new instead of sticking with the past.

although, a collab with a story could be better if you maybe raised the bar a little and, like, semi-storyboard it if you want. instead of, i dunno, describing it. then everyone participating could understand the vision more clearly. just a thought.

It wasn't really meant to be a fan fiction or anything of the sort. My name being there is but a mere bi product of the ending of the former collab. Something new and fresh, but still rather serious I'm all for.

SIFTER wrote:It wasn't really meant to be a fan fiction or anything of the sort. My name being there is but a mere bi product of the ending of the former collab. Something new and fresh, but still rather serious I'm all for.

I have to warn you, and I hate to be that guy that just tells you what NOT do, but when a project starts to be taken too seriously by those who make it you run the risk of not being taken seriously at all. The more serious you take your own project the more pretentious it makes you look, and thus the less respect you get from whomever you show your project to.

It's happened to me plenty of times, so I've learned to give myself some breathing room and fit in some silliness. It's fun and projects/collabs are supposed to be fun anyways. If you want to make a dark and brooding storyline be my guest, but know what you're getting yourself into.

I appreciate this, man. Thank you. See? That's the type of comment people need, not "you and your idea are equally as dumb" sort of thing. No one ever told me that like this. I do fall victim of that flaw in almost anything irl, and I need to learn to loosen up somehow. Easier said than done in my case, sure, but I'll try my best. It's just that what I want to do something, I like to do my best to make it at least somewhat acceptable, but I guess that falls under the category of trying to please everyone which is impossible.

That said, I'm pretty sure a lot can be done in a civil war type of collab.

a civil war storyline is something I've been thinking about for a while. Lets say members get tired of how staff are doing things (doesnt have to be seperated by staff and member tho) and decide to make their own 'group'. So then dark demon is split up into two groups. (Could be something like North DD/South DD, DD1/DD2 whatever) Then the group tries to take over by gaining control of the original darkdemon group's 'land'. But for the sake of keeping stuff simple, they could just be trying to put up a flag in a specific area (Like, they're trying to get to a room that says "homepage" or something) which would mean that they've won and the site is theirs.

to have a storyline, we could animate in a specific order and have a specific thing thats supposed to happen by the end of the animation. since its a war it wouldnt have to be 1v1 fights, but someone will always have the flag and someone else will always make them drop it/ lose it/kill the person etc. anything that would make the next person have to take the flag and move them even closer to where they're trying to place the flag.

I dont think Im doing good at explaining it, but comparing it to dojodemon might make it seem simpler.

dd members breaking into the dojo = DD2 members trying to get to the 'hompage' to place their flagDojo members fighting them off = DD1 members fighting off DD2 members

Still dont think I've really explained this good. Its really not as complicated as it may sound lmao

Maybe instead of a collab solely about the established members (which seems kinda self indulgent at this point, to me at least) you instead make the main character a stereotypical "new" member, like the default stk. A noob, basically.

The story goes that the noob is on the path to becoming a good animator, like all of us once were, but is just starting out. Along this noobs journey all of the established and recognized members help this noob along the way whether that be by sparring, fighting with them, climbing a mountain, gymnastics w/e. Maybe there's a goal at the end? Some sort of big bad, ShadowLith? Idk. I'm just spitballing here.

The point is that in everyone's part they get to show in their own way how they would help the noob out, and by the end of the collab the noob is noticeably better at animation and gets to ride into the sunset with the big boys. I think that would paint a pretty picture.

There would have to be some organization to have the noob be sucky at the beginning and elite by the end, but ultimately each part would be up to whoever makes it.